World

France and parts of England saw their driest July on record, the countries’ weather agencies said on Monday, exacerbating stretched water resources that have forced restrictions on both sides of the Channel.

In France, where an intense drought has hammered farmers and prompted widespread limits on freshwater use, there was just 9.7 millimetres (0.38 inches) of rain last month, Meteo France said.

That was 84 percent down on the average levels seen for July between 1991 and 2022, and made it the second driest month since March 1961, the agency added.

Meanwhile swathes of southern and eastern England recorded the lowest rainfall in July on record, the UK’s Met Office. 

The whole of England recorded an average of 23.1 mm of rain — the lowest figure for the month since 1935 and the seventh lowest July total on record, it said.

The Met Office has been compiling records since 1836.

The low rainfall in both countries has been coupled with a summer of unprecedentedly high temperatures, which topped 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in England last month for the first time ever.

Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that carbon emissions from humans burning fossil fuels are heating the planet, raising the risk and severity of droughts, heatwaves, and other extreme weather events.

Analysis by an international team of researchers released last Friday found climate change caused by human activity made the recent record-shattering UK heatwave at least 10 times more likely to occur.

– ‘Vicious circle’ –

Water companies on both sides of the Channel are struggling to respond to the parched conditions.

Nearly all of France’s 96 mainland regions have imposed water use restrictions, also a record. 

The country is bracing for its third heatwave this summer, beginning in the southeast on Monday before heading north toward Paris.

Farmers nationwide are reporting difficulties in feeding livestock because of parched grasslands, while irrigation has been banned in large areas of the northwest and southeast due to freshwater shortages.

On the eastern river Rhine, which runs along the France-Germany border, commercial boats are having to run at a third of their carrying capacity in order to avoid hitting the bottom because the water level is so low.

Environment Minister Christophe Bechu said July’s rainfall represented “just 12 percent of what’s needed”. 

“We have a heatwave that increases the need (for water) and a drought that is limiting what is available, pushing us into this vicious cycle,” Bechu told BFM television during a visit to the hard-hit Isere department in the southeast.

In England, one water provider has so far announced restrictions.

Southern Water, which is responsible for supplies over a swathe of central southern England, will impose limits on its almost one million customers from later this week.

But the so-called hosepipe ban could soon be replicated by other providers, following a warning by the UK government’s Environment Agency that people needed to use water “wisely”.

Most of England has moved into “prolonged dry weather” status, the agency said last week. 

This means it is now taking precautionary actions to mitigate impacts “as hydrological conditions deteriorate”.

UN head Antonio Guterres warned Monday that a misunderstanding could spark nuclear destruction as the United States, Britain and France urged Russia to stop “its dangerous nuclear rhetoric and behaviour.”

At the opening of a key nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference in New York, Guterres warned that the world faced “a nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War.”

Citing Russia’s war with Ukraine and tensions on the Korean peninsula and in the Middle East, Guterres said he feared that crises “with nuclear undertones” could escalate.

“Today, humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” Guterres told the 10th review conference of the NPT, an international treaty that came into force in 1970 to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

“We have been extraordinarily lucky so far. But luck is not a strategy. Nor is it a shield from geopolitical tensions boiling over into nuclear conflict,” he added, calling on nations to “put humanity on a new path towards a world free of nuclear weapons.”

The meeting, held at the UN’s headquarters in New York, has been postponed several times since 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It will run until August 26.

Guterres said the conference was “a chance to strengthen” the treaty and “make it fit for the worrying world around us.

“Eliminating nuclear weapons is the only guarantee they will never be used,” the secretary-general implored, adding that he would visit Hiroshima for the anniversary of the August 6, 1945 atomic bombing of the Japanese city by the United States.

“Almost 13,000 nuclear weapons are now being held in arsenals around the world. All this at a time when the risks of proliferation are growing and guardrails to prevent escalation are weakening,” Guterres added.

In January, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France — had pledged to prevent the further dissemination of nuclear weapons.

On Monday, America, Britain and France reaffirmed their commitment in a joint statement, saying a “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

– ‘Need to act’ –

The three also took aim at Russia, urging Moscow to respect its international commitments under the NPT.

“Following Russia’s unprovoked and unlawful war of aggression against Ukraine, we call on Russia to cease its irresponsible and dangerous nuclear rhetoric and behaviour,” they said.

The statement came as US President Joe Biden called on Russia and China to enter nuclear arms control talks.

The US leader reiterated in a statement that his administration is ready to “expeditiously negotiate” a replacement to New START, the treaty capping intercontinental nuclear forces in the United States and Russia, which is set to expire in 2026.

The NPT, which the signatories review every five years, aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, promote complete disarmament and promote cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

At the last review conference in 2015, the parties were unable to reach agreement on substantive issues.

“The world can never be safe as long as any country has nuclear weapons,” said Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, who was in New York for the meeting.

“And the NPT recognizes this,” she added. “It’s the reason that the treaty exists. And now states, parties more than ever need to act.”

Indian authorities reported Asia’s first possible monkeypox fatality on Monday after the death of a man who recently returned from United Arab Emirates testing positive.

Kerala state’s health ministry said tests on the 22-year-old “showed that the man had monkeypox”. 

Three monkeypox-related fatalities have so far been reported outside Africa in an outbreak that the World Health Organization has declared a global health emergency.

The Indian man died in Kerala on July 30 around a week after returning from the UAE and being taken to hospital.

It was unclear however whether monkeypox was the cause of death.

“The youth had no symptoms of monkeypox. He had been admitted to a hospital with symptoms of encephalitis and fatigue,” the Indian Express daily quoted Kerala’s health minister Veena George as saying on Sunday.

Twenty people identified as high risk of infection were being kept under observation, she added, including family members, friends who played football with the man and medical staff.

– 18,000 cases –

According to the WHO, more than 18,000 monkeypox cases have been detected throughout the world outside Africa since the beginning of May, most of them in Europe.

Spain last week recorded two monkeypox-related deaths and Brazil one.

It is however unclear if monkeypox actually caused the three fatalities, with Spanish authorities as of Sunday still carrying out autopsies and Brazilian authorities saying its deceased patient had other “serious conditions”.

The WHO’s European office said on Saturday that more monkeypox-related deaths can be expected.

“With the continued spread of monkeypox in Europe, we will expect to see more deaths,” Catherine Smallwood, Senior Emergency Officer at WHO Europe, said in a statement.

The goal needs to be “interrupting transmission quickly in Europe and stopping this outbreak”, she said.

Paul Hunter of Britain’s University of East Anglia said while the risk of monkeypox-related death outside Africa “remains low… these reports reinforce the need to roll out vaccination as soon as possible to those people who are most at risk”. 

– Nobody’s fault –

India has reported at least four cases, with the first recorded on July 15 in another man who returned to Kerala from the UAE.

Kerala’s health ministry said in its statement on Monday that a high-level team from the state medical board would probe the death.

Primary tests from the National Institute of Virology in the city of Pune showed that the man had the variant from West Africa and that more genetic tests would be conducted.

“The disease is nobody’s fault. Those who have symptoms should inform the health department so that the spread can be contained,” the ministry said, adding that there was “no need to panic”.

It added that the man’s family only informed doctors on July 30 result of tests conducted in Dubai on July 19, by which time he was in a critical condition.

It added that there were 165 passengers on the same flight from UAE but that “nobody is a close contact”.

– Rash –

Monkeypox, so called because it was first discovered in a monkey, is related to the deadly smallpox virus, which was eradicated in 1980, but is far less severe. 

Early signs of the disease include a high fever, swollen lymph glands and a chickenpox-like rash.

In May 2022, a flurry of cases was detected in countries outside Africa in people with no travel links to the region. 

The WHO last month declared the outbreak to be a global health emergency — the highest alarm it can sound.

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UN head Antonio Guterres warned Monday that the world faced “a nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War” and was just “one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.”

“We have been extraordinarily lucky so far. But luck is not a strategy. Nor is it a shield from geopolitical tensions boiling over into nuclear conflict,” Guterres said at the start of a conference of countries belonging to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

“Today, humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” he said, calling on nations to “put humanity on a new path towards a world free of nuclear weapons.”

Guterres’s comments came at the opening 10th review conference of the NPT, an international treaty that came into force in 1970 to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

The meeting, held at the UN’s headquarters in New York, has been postponed several times since 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It will run until August 26.

Guterres said the conference was “a chance to strengthen” the treaty and “make it fit for the worrying world around us,” citing Russia’s war in Ukraine and tensions on the Korean peninsula and in the Middle East.

“Eliminating nuclear weapons is the only guarantee they will never be used,” the secretary-general implored, adding that he would visit Hiroshima for the anniversary of the August 6, 1945 atomic bombing of the Japanese city by the United States.

“Almost 13,000 nuclear weapons are now being held in arsenals around the world. All this at a time when the risks of proliferation are growing and guardrails to prevent escalation are weakening,” Guterres added.

In January, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France — had pledged to prevent the further dissemination of nuclear weapons.

At the last review conference in 2015, the parties were unable to reach agreement on substantive issues.